Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Marketplace - Bike Trip Part 3

Ban Hin Heup

Early morning market place as the village
awakens. Not having skipped a beat, patriotic clips on the communal television
set: the road scenes of the country de-garbagified to reflect the perfect
Homeland.

Buses come to stop here and the market
people come out waving sticks of barbequed meat or eggs impaled on skewers. A
man with a broom and shovel cleans up the large gravel expanse in front of the
market.

It rained last night and this morning the
mountain is full of mist, rising slowly from the forest floor as though fires
were being lit to lift the steam.

Here, in the marketplace, the smell of
charcoal burning; wood of forest essences cooks the rice and meat and this
ancient smell bridges the then and the now.

The couple who was here last night is
still here. She breast feeds her baby and they are still waiting. I wonder what
it must be like for a man to be able to offer no more than a table and corner
cot in the marketplace for his wife and infant. I sadden at the futurelessness
I see in his eyes.

The fog lifts not. I’ve had my breakfast
of phở, looking forward to my
lunch of phở and my delicious phở dinner. As always I am amazed at
the poverty of peasant cooking in Southeast Asia. Like the French, they have
everything they need to make a varied cuisine and yet they always seem to eat
the same thing, repetitiously; the brutish monotony of days merging with the
soul-crushing monotony of their diet.

This is the Wild East, where people
struggle and make do. Why do any of these people leave their dirt villages and
dusty trails? Wasn’t life simpler there? The cooking fires burn just as hot
there and the surrounding forest cover protects them without outside help.

Second cup of coffee. I brought instant
coffee and milk with me from home. Other buses come; the vendors hold up their
wares like crucifixes.

1 comment:

>As always I am amazed at the poverty of peasant cooking in Southeast Asia. Like the French, they have everything they need to make a varied cuisine and yet they always seem to eat the same thing, repetitiously; the brutish monotony of days merging with the soul-crushing monotony of their diet.<